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Simon Forman’s record of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale that he purportedly saw on 15 May 1611 has been almost systematically attacked by critics. However, reviewing in the early modern period was more than just an academic exercise, and Forman’s construction is literary production in its own right. Can the review thus be dismissed as a hasty plot summary written by a notoriously unreliable narrator? In this article, I intend to demonstrate that it cannot. Indeed, and notwithstanding Forman’s failure to mention the bear, the play’s numerous off-stage deaths and, most notably, the whole of the Statue Scene, I will be arguing that the account cannot be categorized as a sketchy portrait of Shakespeare’s work whose only intrinsic worth is its claim to coming first. In fact, Forman’s initial review can be said to set in motion a paradigm of readings, and rewritings, of the play and, as one of the earliest instances of Shakespearean reception, can be regarded as a touchstone with which to compare subsequent criticism.
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